Monthly Archives: April 2012

President Obama’s campaign of self-congratulation over the killing of bin Laden isn’t sitting well with some present and former members of the Navy SEALs — the outfit that actually took out al Qaeda’s leader. Ryan Zinke, a former Commander in the US Navy who spent 23 years as a SEAL had this to say: The decision was a no brainer. I applaud him for making it but I would not »

Earlier today, the Institute for Energy Research released an excellent short piece on the basics of energy policy, titled Hard Facts: An Energy Primer. It is an excellent starting point for understanding America’s energy resources and the basics of a sound energy policy. The publication includes a number of illuminating graphics, like this one, which shows how America’s energy consumption has remained in check even as GDP has risen rapidly, »

Can it really be 30 years since Blade Runner? Since the original anyway–there have been so many different “director’s cuts” now that I’ve lost track of the thing. I remember being, as the cliche goes, “blown away” by it when seeing it in the theater on opening night, and being not quite sure what to make of it. It is standard operating procedure for most writers to disdain the film »

Today President Obama used a joint press conference with the Prime Minister of Japan as a campaign opportunity. In response to a friendly question from a reporter–it appeared to be planted, actually–Obama repeated his claim that Mitt Romney would not have authorized the killing of Osama bin Laden: Romney is right, of course, that even Jimmy Carter would have authorized bin Laden’s killing once our military and intelligence agencies had »

Yesterday marked three years since the Democrat-controlled Senate last passed a budget. In violation of federal law, Harry Reid and his confederates have simply refused, for three years, to put their plans for federal spending on paper. In the last three years, the federal government has spent $10.4 trillion and the national debt has increased by $4.5 trillion. The sheer irresponsibility of Washington Democrats is breathtaking. It is hard to »

Last week, we noted that a poll conducted for the campaign of Richard Mourdock showed him leading Sen. Richard Lugar by five points in the race for the Republican nomination for the Indiana Senate seat Lugar has held since 1977. Lugar’s polling may well confirm that he is in trouble. Recently, his campaign has been flailing at Mourdock with an air of desperation. Here is how the Indianapolis Star puts »

Robert Samuelson has a worthwhile take-down of the notion that Washington operates for the benefit of the rich, in defiance of the will of the people. That view has long seemed ridiculous to me. If it were valid, how would we explain the income tax structure, wherein the richest 10 percent pay 55 percent of the freight? How would we explain the corporate tax rate, which is the highest among »

Tim Carney relates the story of the Obama administration’s corrupt use of Medicare funds to conceal the effects of Obamacare. This is an amazing story that has been told previously by Jeffrey Anderson in the Weekly Standard and, as Carney reminds me, Benjamin Sasse and Charles Hurt in the New York Post: Obamacare got some of its alleged savings by cutting Medicare spending by $500 billion. Republicans — hypocritically, given »

The Daily Mail delivers the news of another inspirational example of government medicine in England, much of it packed into the headline: “Doris, 95, was left on a hospital trolley for 28 hours – and when her son asked where she was, doctors didn’t have a clue…” The Daily Mail reporter raises the question whether Doris Miller’s case represents an aberration, a preview of coming attractions or an example of »

Fierce competition for this week’s Power Line Green Loser of the Week Award. It might have to be a group award for all the wind power wind bags, for lo—it turns out that wind power may cause global warming! So says a new study out in Britain, reported in The Telegraph (“Wind farms can cause climate change finds new study”): On huge wind farms the motion of the turbines mixes »

When I was growing up in South Dakota, fireworks were everywhere during the summer. Boys spent much of June and July blowing things up. All kinds of fireworks were legal, and the firecrackers of the time–Zebras were our favorites–contained significantly more gunpowder than today’s watered-down versions. Still more powerful firecrackers were illegal but widely available–cherry bombs, silver salutes, and M80s. Maybe it was a miracle that all of the members »

I wrote most recently about the Obama administration’s so-called “preventive services” regulation in “Left comes for the Archbishop.” It is one of the amazing stories of Obamacare. The story continued this past week with the grilling of HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius by South Carolina Rep. Trey Gowdy in a committee hearing (video below). Thank you, Rep. Gowdy. Secretary Sebelius doesn’t know much about the Constitution she is sworn to uphold. »

President Obama promoted Obamacare with a relentlessly repeated set of misrepresentations regarding that 2,700-page bill: “If you’ve got health insurance, you like your doctors, you like your plan, you can keep your doctor, you can keep your plan. Nobody is talking about taking that away from you.” He set some kind of an indoor record for falsity per word with these whoppers. Even so, the American people caught on to »

I watched Jimmy Kimmel’s monologue at last night’s White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner in its entirety here. The Hill also reported on the event, including President Obama’s speech. Kimmel was funny in spots, but as is always the case at these events, he saved his really mean jokes for the Republicans. Barbs aimed at Democrats are likely to be flattery in disguise, like Kimmel’s references to Democrats “rolling over” in »

Since I spend no small amount of time beating down on Progressivism and all things Progressive here, more than a few folks have noted the irony that I’m currently having my house painted inside and out by . . . Progressive Painting! (And for folks in Northern Virginia, write down the phone number in the photo; they’re really good.) Not to worry; I’m not going to rush out to switch »

It’s been a long time since I got very interested in an NFL draft, which some fans regard as the most exciting event on the sports calendar. When the home team goes 3-13, the amount of attention you pay to football, including but not limited to the draft, tends to decline drastically. So I was one of the last to know that the Miami Dolphins drafted Texas A&M quarterback Ryan »

Don’t miss Peter Robinson’s take-down of a piece in the Washington Post by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, two veteran purveyors of Washington conventional wisdom. Mann and Ornstein fret that (you’ll never guess this) our politics are broken and that (don’t be shocked) this is the fault of Republicans. They write: The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by »